Abstract
In his book Remarkable Eccentrics and Originals, M. I. Pyliaev describes the famous Prince Kurakin, a fop of Catherine the Great’s era:
Kurakin was a great pedant about clothes. Every morning when he awoke his servant handed him a book, like an album, where there were samples of the materials from which his amazing suits were sewn and pictures of outfits. For every outfit there was a particular sword, buckles, ring, snuff-box, etc. Once, playing cards with the Empress, the Prince suddenly sensed something amiss; opening his snuff-box, he saw that the ring that was on his finger did not go at all with the box, and the box did not match the rest of his outfit. His displeasure was so great that even though he had a very strong hand he still lost the game, but fortunately nobody except he himself had noticed the dreadful carelessness of his servant.’
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Notes
M. I. Pyliaev, Zamechatel’nye chudaki i originaly (Moscow, 1990), 90–1. His-torically there were different words in Russian denoting ‘the man of fashion.’ In the eighteenth century words in use included shchegol’ (fop), ‘petimetr” (petit maître), ’ fert’ (coxcomb). In England the word ‘dandy’ was already in use around 1810, and it was adopted in France between 1815 and 1820. In Russia, ‘dandy’ appeared in 1820–23, first used by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin: ‘kak dandy londonskiy odet’ (dressed like a London dandy). Characteristi-cally, Pushkin spelled it in English, as it was still a new word, and explained its meaning in a special note. The Russian spelling of the word ‘dandy’ varied throughout the nineteenth century and there existed other words in this semantic field (frant, shematon, lev) but gradually ‘dandy’ became the most generally accepted term.
John Harvey, Men in Black (Chicago, 1996).
James Laver, Costume and Fashion (New York, 1986), 103–27.
T. T. Korshunova, Kostium v Fossil XVIII — nachala XX veka iz sobraniia gosu-darstvennogo Ermitazha (Leningrad, 1970), 7.
On masculinity in the nineteenth century, see Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Cross-Dressing, Sex and Gender (Philadelphia, 1993), 174–84.
On the gender aspects of the dandy, Jessica R. Feldman, Gender on the Divide (Ithaca, 1993);
P. McNeil, ‘Macaroni Masculinities,’ Fashion Theory 4, no. 4 (2000): 375–405.
I. A. Krylov, ‘Mysli filosofa po mode’, Russkaia proza XVIII veka, vol. 2 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), 757.
Ibid., 754. Compare suspicious and disapproving attitudes towards English macaronies, discussed in Peter McNeil, ‘That Doubtful Gender: Macaroni Dress and Male Sexualities,’ Fashion Theory 3, no. 4 (1999): 411–47.
F. F. Vigel’, Zapiski (Moscow, 2000), 51.
Iu. K. Arnol’d, Vospominaniia (n.p., 1892), vyp. 1, 9. See also on this context Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits (New York, 1995), 63–116.
A. S. Pushkin, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1949), 315.
On Pushkin’s dandyism, see Sam N. Driver, Pushkin: Literature and Social Ideas (New York, 1989);
M. Green-leaf, Pushkin and Romantic Fashion: Fragment, Elegy, Orient, Irony (Stanford, 1994);
L. Grossman, ‘Pushkin i dendizm,’ L. Grossman, Sobranie sochineii v 4 tomakh (Moscow, 1928), 4: 14–45;
Iu. M. Lotman, ‘Russkii dendizm,’ in Besedy o russkoi kul’ture (St Petersburg, 1994), 123–35.
O. A. Proskurin, Poeziia Pushkina ili podvizhnyi palimpsest (Moscow, 1999), 328–47.
M. I. Zhikharev, ‘Dokladnaia zapiska potomstvu o Petre Iakovleviche Chaadaeve’, Russkoe obshchestvo 30-kh godov XIX veka. Liudi i idei. Memuary sovremennikov (Moscow, 1989), 57. Iu. M. Lotman, commenting on Chaadaev’s particular style, noted, ‘P. Ia. Chaadaev can be an example of exquisite fashion. His dandyism did not consist in the desire to follow fashion, but in the deep conviction that he set it. The strict absence of elegance was the very framework of the elegance of his costume.’
Iu. M. Lotman, Kul’tura i vziyv (Moscow, 1992), 127.
Konstantin K. Rotikov, Drugoi Peterburg (St Petersburg, 2000), 252–9.
I. I. Panaev, Literaturnye vospominanüa (Moscow, 1988), 197. A rubakha was a traditional, long shirt worn outside the pants and belted at the waist. A murmolka was a hat with a high crown narrowing upwards (BEC).
L. E. Shepelev, Tituly, mundiry, ordena (Leningrad, 1991), 93.
A. Ia. Panaeva (Golovacheva), Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1986), 94.
Iu. M. Lotman, ‘Teatr i teatral’nost’ v stroe kul’tury nachala XIX veka’, Iu. M. Lotman, Izbrannye stat’i v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Tallinn, 1992), 269–87.
I. A. Goncharov, ‘Pis’rna stolichnogo druga k provintsial’nomu zhenikhu’, Velikaia taina odevat’sia k litsu (St Petersburg, 1992), 20–1.
O. S. Murav’eva, Kak vospityvali russkogo dvorianina (St Petersburg, 1998), 78–9.
Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son and Others (London, 1929), 258.
I. Odoevtseva, Na beregakh Nevy (Moscow, 1989), 96–7. A lycée was an elite, college-preparatory secondary school. ‘Petit lever’ (literally, little rising) is here a sarcastic reference to the custom of heads of state receiving guests; originally it meant the morning reception during the French king’s dressing ritual (BEC).
S. K. Makovskii, ‘Diagilev’, Sergei Diagilev i russkoe iskusstvo, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1982), 309.
M. Dobuzhinskii, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1987), 203.
On variations of Soviet dandyism see M. A. Svede, ‘Twiggy or Trotsky, Or what the Soviet dandy will be wearing this next Five-Year Plan,’ in Dandies: Fashion and Finesse in Art and Culture, ed. S. Filliu-Yeh (New York, 2001), 243–70.
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Vainslitein, O. (2002). Russian Dandyism: Constructing a Man of Fashion. In: Clements, B.E., Friedman, R., Healey, D. (eds) Russian Masculinities in History and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230501799_4
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